September 2009
6 posts
Mobile Banks in the Developing World Prove Simpler... →
Recent initiatives designed to make U.S. consumer financial products simpler and intelligible to customers, reminds me of a study we did on Mobile Banks† in the developing world. Designed to…
Sep 17th
Banks can learn from retailers →
It’s been a tough recession for retailers, although the better ones are emerging from it stronger relative to their peers than before the deluge. That’s obviously true of the big supermarket…
Sep 17th
Design It: Shelter Competition public voting open →
On the occasion of the exhibitions Frank Lloyd Wright: From Within Outward and Learning By Doing, the Guggenheim and Google SketchUp invited amateur and professional designers from…
Sep 14th
Design It: Shelter Competition public voting open →
On the occasion of the exhibitions Frank Lloyd Wright: From Within Outward and Learning By Doing, the Guggenheim and Google SketchUp invited amateur and professional designers from…
Sep 14th
Interactive art in blackface →
Perhaps the most intriguing piece I’ve seen at Ars Electronica so far is called WIA<>WIA, “Water in Africa, Water in Austria”. On the surface, it’s a well-thought through piece of installation art…
Sep 5th
Kristen Taylor, food pornographer →
Kristen Taylor is a food pornographer. She asks us not to tell her mother… though she’s just told a very full room at Ars Electronica in Linz. She’s the instigator today of a “food hacking”…
Sep 5th
August 2009
5 posts
Extropy →
Extropy is neither wave nor particle, nor pure energy. It is an immaterial force that is very much like information. Since extropy is defined as negative entropy — the reversal of disorder — it is,…
Aug 30th
What future for media and journalism? →
This is the text of the Richard Dunn Memorial Lecture, given at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival by Robert Peston, at 12.30pm on Saturday 29 August 2009. In it, the…
Aug 30th
MARKETS AND WARFARE →
Our unregulated global marketplace is a fantastic conduit for warfare since it is… extremely complex (nobody understands it, least of all economists), tightly coupled (information travels at…
Aug 22nd
MARKETS AND WARFARE →
Our unregulated global marketplace is a fantastic conduit for warfare since it is… extremely complex (nobody understands it, least of all economists), tightly coupled (information travels at…
Aug 21st
Project Tuva →
Using Richard Feynman’s famous series of lectures as a testbed, Microsoft Research has created a very impressive video presentation tool. yes, we’ve seen video annotation and linked…
Aug 12th
July 2009
3 posts
Stating the obvious: the book you can read with... →
Just a little obvious aside, this - but something that only struck me this morning as I was heading to the studio. I mentioned it to Webb, and he said “write it down” so here we are. It’s been…
Jul 7th
Making the web useful no 47265 - plain text →
Good friend and fellow Rebooter Peter Rukavina asked me to write about Instapaper, as I was raving on about it when we had our annual meetup in Copenhagen. I thought it a difficult…
Jul 5th
The story behind Obama's digital campaign →
Mybarackobama.com during the campaign The Obama campaign picked up the Titanium Grand Prix at last week’s Cannes Lions advertising festival, and was praised in particular for its…
Jul 1st
June 2009
21 posts
JOURNAL: Resilience Judo →
There are growing signs — from a black swan in savings/debt reduction to massive debt loads to quarterly trillion dollar losses in personal wealth to stagnant/falling consumer purchases to…
Jun 30th
The start-up checklist. →
Jun 30th
Why Technology Can't Fulfill →
At the beginning of this summer an Amish guy I met online rode his bicycle out to our home along the foggy Pacifica coast. Online, is of course, the last place you’d ever expect to meet an…
Jun 28th
Roundup: Scientists Write to Obama, Retrofitting... →
An Open Letter to the President If you think it’s frustrating to be a climate activist watching Washington, imagine what it’s like for the scientists who are running the numbers while…
Jun 28th
The sour Wikipedian →
Forget altruism. Misanthropy and egotism are the fuel of online social production. That’s the conclusion suggested by a new study of the character traits of the contributors to Wikipedia. A team of…
Jun 28th
Thinking about complexity in the world we live in... →
A few decades ago, I read a book called AI: The Tumultous History of The Search for Artificial Intelligence, by Daniel Crevier. In it, the late and brilliant Donald Michie is quoted as saying…
Jun 28th
First LIFT09 France videos are online →
The first LIFT France conference took place last way in Marseilles. Being in Seoul, South Korea, myself, I missed it entirely, but luckily the videos are now becoming…
Jun 23rd
Stop Press for June 19th →
On the library / from a working library quot;I wonder, then, if the promise of an ebook isn’t the book but the library. And if, in all our attention to a new device for reading, we’re neglecting…
Jun 21st
Iran, Citizen Media and Media Attention →
It’s been an interesting few days for people who study social media. As the protests over election results have continued in Iran, and Iranian authorities have prevented most mainstream…
Jun 20th
UK report on how cities use innovation to tackle... →
British Council press release: Breakthrough cities is a groundbreaking report on how cities can mobilise creativity and knowledge to tackle compelling social challenges. The…
Jun 20th
Out of control decision-making →
I’ve just noticed that TED has recently put another talk online by the entertaining and thought-provoking behavioural economist Dan Ariely where he discusses why our feeling of being in…
Jun 20th
Maps as service design: The Incidental →
Schulze & Webb worked as part of the team producing a unique service for the world’s biggest furniture and design event: Salone di Mobile in Milan, this year. The British Council usually…
Jun 17th
CENTRALIZED OR DECENTRALIZED ENERGY? →
There’s little doubt that the centralization (the current approach) of alternative energy production is more efficient than decentralization.  It enables location optimization (better…
Jun 15th
Portugese Sporting Information Graphics →
I saw these recently on Chiqui Esteban’s excellent infographicsnews.com. They are from a new newspaper launched in Portugal called “i” They show why the Latin world is ahead in newspaper…
Jun 15th
Swine fl(u/ight) precautions →
The temperature drill on plane @ Shanghai.
Jun 15th
The New Properties of New Property →
Arnold Schwarzenegger is a lefty, and he does not know it. Or maybe Arnie is one of those righty freedom fighters that end up so far off to the right they end up going full circle and re-emerging on…
Jun 14th
Mobile at Radio 1's Big Weekend →
My thinking behind this year’s mobile offering for Radio 1’s Big Weekend was ‘How do we make it spreadable?’. Of course we’d deliver a wap site as usual. This year we also offered some nice and…
Jun 12th
What Is conversational currency? →
Jay Deragon argues in a short piece on AlwaysOn that social media and related tools are generating a new currency that is created by the propagation of your conversation and its…
Jun 11th
Alternative Vote: Why we should change to voting... →
Here’s the text of an article on the need for constitutional reform that the Guardian have kindly published today: Parliamentary democracy is on its knees. Lachrymose MPs haunt the corridors of…
Jun 11th
Mapumental: Time & Scenicness in Maps →
MySociety has given us a sneak peak at Mapumental, a map app that lets you pivot on travel-time, “scenicness”, and house-price in the London area. Just enter a postal code and if…
Jun 5th
Obama’s Cairo Speech →
I don’t think I could improve upon M.J. Rosenberg’s summary of what the meaning of the Obama speech would be to the Mid East. Clearly it was directed at that audience and its reception…
Jun 5th
May 2009
11 posts
Ignite Show: Hillel Cooperman on the Lego... →
Some people never grow up. Some people wait to have children so that they can become kids again. When Hillel Coopermans’s young ones were four he began his family’s Lego collection. This…
May 29th
Google Web Elements and Google's Iceberg... →
At Google I/O this morning, DeWitt Clinton announed Google Web Elements, a new simple interface layer to Google Ajax APIs. The goal is to make bringing Google features to other sites as easy as…
May 28th
The Myth of Macroinnovation →
An idea is making the rounds and appearing in articles like this New York Times piece, and it goes roughly thus: the age of the small inventor is over because to work on stuff that matters…
May 26th
Wales Plans For Energy Self-Sufficiency With... →
By John Vidal Wales today laid out radical plans to make it one of the most energy- and resource-efficient countries in the world within a generation. The government development…
May 23rd
YCN, 72 Rivington Street, London →
Jiggery Pokery’s window display, as viewed from inside YCN’s new studio/gallery/library space The Young Creative Network (YCN) has opened its newly renovated headquarters at 72…
May 21st
Politican as self-tracker - Bob Graham's notebooks →
Politicians have always been self-trackers. In the flow of political action, you need a notebook just to keep track of people’s names. But when a recent political controversy was resolved by…
May 20th
Scribd Store a Welcome Addition to Ebook Market... →
The document-sharing site Scribd has launched a new “Scribd Store” selling view and download access to documents and books. As part of the launch, there are now more than 650 O’Reilly ebooks now…
May 18th
Tim Brown on the participation economy →
Nokia’s IdeasProject site features a video interview with Tim Brown, CEO of Ideo, where he argues that that communications technology is leading us back to the kind of…
May 4th
Here & There, and Wired UK →
As long as I’ve know Jack Schulze, he’s been working with maps. The first one I remember was a way of mapping Barbican, which is a three dimensional architectural maze of a housing and cultural…
May 2nd
Bendy Map Projection →
It’s not often a new kind of map perspective is invented, but this one by Here & There looks new to me. It’s an ingenious blend of 3D and overhead orthogonal. The “bent” perspective is…
May 2nd
From Generalists to Specialists →
A while back Atlassian reached $100 million in all time revenue. We’ve asked some of our employees to give us their take on how they’ve seen the company grow. Better late than never, VP of…
May 1st
April 2009
54 posts
Procter takes a real gamble →
INNOVATION: “How P&G Plans To Clean Up: CEO A.G. Lafley is fully focused on pushing growth even as markets are shrinking around the globe,” interview with Roger O. Crockett, BusinessWeek, 13…
Apr 30th
Reinventing the Book in the Age of the Web →
There’s a lot of excitement about ebooks these days, and rightly so. While Amazon doesn’t release sales figures for the Kindle, there’s no question that it represents a turning point in the public…
Apr 30th
Links for 2009-04-29 [del.icio.us] →
The new Architectural Review [The Sesquipedalist] “Inevitably I compare any architectural magazine with my fictional perfect ideal version.” And then Steve outlines a fantastic vision of what an…
Apr 30th
Social networking sites as business tools →
anthrodesign is a Yahoo! group of (currently 1693) individuals interested in the role of applied anthropology in the corporate, public sector, and medical contexts. A recent…
Apr 30th